Why a resale figure and the maker's figure differ
The same model reaches a buyer through the company that trained it and through shops that resell an interface to it. The figures do not converge, and the direction of the gap is decided per row rather than per shop. As of 2026-09-12.
| What moves | Why it moves | What a buyer can do about it |
|---|---|---|
| The version | Shops do not all carry the same release of a family | Fix the version before comparing the figure |
| The margin | Each row is priced separately, so one tier can be marked up and another passed through | Compare the tier the work will actually use |
| The terms | Ceilings, concurrency and failure billing are properties of the model, not the shop | Read the maker's documentation even when buying elsewhere |
Inclusion rule. The three differences that recur between a maker's published figure and a resale of the same weights. A difference that appears on one shop only is a fact about that shop and belongs on its entry. Order. In the order a buyer hits them.
1A markup is a service charge, and it is sometimes negative
One account, one key and one invoice across dozens of model families is the product a reseller sells. For a production using four models from three makers, that removes real work, and a markup on the rate is the price of it. Nothing unusual there.
What surprises people is the other direction. A shop can undercut the company that trained a model, sometimes by a wide margin, usually on a fast or discounted variant. That is a promotional position rather than a structural one, and reading it as the market rate leads to a budget that expires.
2Version is where a same-model comparison actually goes wrong
A family in circulation for a couple of years has several releases and several fast variants. Two shops quoting the same family name may be selling different weights, and the price gap between them can be larger than any quality gap.
The safe habit is to treat the family name as a category and the release as the product. Where a shop does not name a release, assume nothing: the newest is the flattering guess and often the wrong one, because older releases are cheaper to serve.
3The terms are the part resale reliably drops
How long one generation may run, how many may run at once, how long a credit stays spendable, and whether a failed generation is charged: those are the four facts that decide whether a rate is reachable, and they live on the pages of whoever made the model.
A comparison assembled from resale pages alone will therefore be complete on price and empty on feasibility. Two rows at the same figure can differ by a factor in how much finished video they produce in a week, and nothing in either row shows it.
Written to explain, not to record. No sentence here is attributed to a seller, and none of it should be quoted as a fact about one. The sourced material is on the ledger. Related: Delivery resolution, A quiet month.
4The production behind the price
Price aside, what goes into the seconds behind “Resale and source” is described in SceneMixer's guides:
The second trim replaces the first trimmed version; the generated clip stays in Version History.
SceneMixer, Trim a Clip: Cut the Start or the End Without Regenerating — “Can I trim the same clip twice?” (read 2026-10-13)
Downloads and the asset library follow your Music switch; a shared link always plays the version with the episode’s music.
SceneMixer, Background Music in an AI Short Drama: The Built-in Score — “Does the music carry into downloads, the library and shared links?” (read 2026-10-13)